Project 91 "SS" 3400/5spd

[woody90gtz]

Waverly's first Carlisle is history, but so is my quarter panel. Popped the LF brake hose on the autox and slid into a chain link fence. Made 2 open runs earlier in the day with no problem (8 of those hairpin 180s), but my first lap of the shootout it let loose. Sucks cause it's gonna be a bitch to fix the quarter...but Advance had the hose in stock and I was able to fix it and drive it home. There's a reason they say the rule of thumb is not to race anything you can't afford to wreck...

The kid liked it though, so that's good. Maybe I'll have a little gearhead buddy and my own little racer once she gets older.

[Asylum]

That's nasty Woody, but it could have been a lot worse.

Good luck with it!!

[ifixalot]

I feel for ya on that quarter panel damage. But at least it didn't hit in front of the rear wheel.

[Rettax3]

Ouch! Glad you weren't hurt though, and if the rear wheel wasn't touched, I doubt you even need to worry about anything structural. Your car has always been solid despite being in NY, you should be able to fix that. GM brake hoses... I had almost gotten it pushed through at the shop I used to work at that if we did brake calipers, we would also do the hoses. Even the very conservative manager conceded that it wasn't a bad idea on at least the Chevys. He just wouldn't quite agree that by the time we were already doing $400 worth of brake work, an extra $9 per side with no extra labor would be worth it for the customer and for our liability. Honestly, as much as that sucks, the cool part is that you race that car, you put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. Damaged or not, respect has been earned by that car.

[woody90gtz]

It was actually a Goodridge braided stainless hose - installed 2013 the same time as the rear disc. The braid was frayed where it blew. I don't know for certain if it was cumulative wear, or if the combination of g-forces and suspension articulation just pinched it at the FE7 endlink on that off-camber swoop right before the straight. That was about the tenth time I hammered on the brakes that day...but I didn't have a gopro in that area then. I actually have a mount in that spot, but only had the RR rolling at the time to see if I could capture it 3 wheeling...but I'll post all that stuff later.

I bought new braided lines (slightly shorter Russell hoses for a Cavalier actually this time) so I can get my swaybar hooked back up. Driving with an Addco rear and no front bar makes it tail happy...which feels weird for a FWD.

The Carlisle pro photographer did get a nice shot about 10sec before the crap hit the fence... And the UMI photographer is actually a huge fan of the car because she has 3 Berettas. So she sent me a bunch of pics too. Even offered a quarter if I need it. haha






It's straight-ish now. Drilled the rivets and used the steel bracket from my spare 95Z rear bumper and heat gun to straighten the urethane. Took it to a buddy's with his porta-power and got it good enough to be water-tight and install the straight bumper and put a sidemarker in it. Hit it with a paint marker to hide the teal, too. haha





Talked to my paint buddy and coming up with a gameplan. The paint job on it now looks great from 20ft, but it has some imperfections coming through from the 90s GM base and probably just the fact that it has teal and two layers of gray on it. Has some crazing on the roof and even a couple bubbles on one fender. Long-term it really needs to be stripped to bare metal and refinished. But - I already have a Camaro in bare metal and epoxy, so that's not a project I wanna get into right now. I'm gonna rock it as-is for the rest of this year and then check in with my body guy this winter to see if he can patch it up temporarily. He says he can get it pretty damn good with his stud welder, hammer & dolly and some filler. I'd blast it bare before he starts. There's a little bit of both colors left over from the respray, so it would be fairly cheap to get it back looking decent. Then I'd have to redo it again in a few years when the quarter filler starts to degrade and the other crazing starts to split. But it would buy me some time to get the Camaro driving.

Be kinda funny to break the n/a drag record this year with a quarter that looks like crumpled tin foil! haha

[Rettax3]

GM just seems to have brake hose issues -yes, I mostly mean what they come with originally, and from what you said your Goodridge may have a Goodexcuse, but I think there is something about how they route them, angles, proximity to other brake components/wheels, overall length or amount of flex, SOMETHING. Even after they have been replaced once, I've seen a small but noticeably higher rate of GM brake hose failure... Maybe after owning so many 3rd-Gen F-Bodies I just EXPECT them to fail, IDK.

Good plan for moving forward, and you have certainly kept a positive attitude -I would be hand-wringing every night for two weeks straight about the paint and the dent, you know, if any of my Berettas looked as clean as yours did to begin with. You've already gotten it straight around that hard bend at the edge of the trunk-lid opening, you'll be just fine getting her straightened out.
...Tinfoil...

[woody90gtz]

Crash video is up. I took the wife's video and played it in super slow mo and it looks like the front left did lock somehow once it was already too late. I felt the line pop on the straight though and it didn't stop for crap. But it makes me wonder what actually happened inside that master cylinder and what sealed off. After changing the LF hose it was the only one that needed bleeding, and I was amazed how little brake fluid it took. Wish I had my LF gopro going...could have answered some questions.

https://youtu.be/riry7WLK3eI

[ifixalot]

Interesting video. Again, I feel sorry you messed up your car. I hope the repair goes well and soon!
When I've had rusty brake lines blow out, gravity drains all the fluid out. Unless air to displace the fluid can't get in
under those bellow like things in the reservoir seal. Maybe some gunk in the vent grooves?

[woody90gtz]

I'm not sure what the cause was. It surprised me when I opened the cap and it looked full. It wouldn't gravity bleed or pump/hold bleed until I slammed on the pedal with the line open. There has to be some sort of safety valve or something.

[woody90gtz]

Met up with Jon and Jay to hit Lebanon and had a #2020 kind of day... dragged two Berettas home dead. Jay broke an axle on his first run, then I missed a shift on the second run...4th to 2nd again and bent the valves...again. Why it has this tendency to block 4th at WOT, but drops into 2nd like butter I don't know. I left home at 6:30am and got home at 10:30pm. The little one was really good all day and seemed to like the new smells and sounds, but she got pretty rough at the end...it was a long day.


Jon's new hitch came in handy dragging Jay's Beretta back to the pits.

Mine got back to the pits under its own power, but it was obviously unhappy. Your 1/8th MPH isn't usually better than your 1/4 MPH. My first run was a 13.7 when I bounced the limiter in 1st. My shift light and limiter RPM were set too close (forgot I had modified the shift light to 6300 but didn't touch the limiter setting from the 6350 I had before). The fubar pass would have been another 13.5 looking at the incrementals. I did find out dumping the clutch in 1st anywhere from 3000-5000 still dead hooks the tires down to 2100rpm and runs almost identical 60's. So I think my next plan is going to be a 2nd gear launch. The extra wheelspeed in 2nd might be enough to shock the tires loose slightly and leave a little better. A 2nd gear dump is how I do the burnout in the water box. Saving one shift should help shave a little time off the ET too...I don't need much.


After I dropped Jay's car off I came back for mine.



I got it apart and saw it smacked every single valve. Stock replacement valves are cheap enough I just ordered all 12..still under $200 with head gaskets, head bolts and pushrods. Lapping them in I discovered all 6 exhaust seats needed to be ground so I had a local buddy do that.



Found a bad inner tie rod bushing with the car apart so I had to order those too. I was hoping to have it back together for a trip to Cicero on the 20th but that's not happening. Everything is slower now with a munchkin. But there's a final test & tune on Oct 25th I should be able to make. Weather should be good for horsepower...let's just hope the 2020 curse doesn't strike again!

[EPfiffner]

Damn, that was shaping up to be a good pass, 14.0 isn't too bad for a hurt motor. Good luck Oct 25th and it's great to see a young gearhead in the making!

[woody90gtz]

By the looks of the incrementals, it would have been another 13.5, but I need a 13.4. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, hopefully one of them will work.

Got it all back together and running and had to to take the intake manifold off again. (Which also means ignition, alt, ps pump, fuel rail, valve covers... It had a bad tick upon fire up (sounded like just one) and turned out to be a collapsed lifter on #5E. I could actually lift the rocker arm tip off the valve by hand. I tore that lifter down and couldn't find anything wrong with it...but it must have been damaged during the overrev. Looking back at pictures the "valve relief" smash marks on the piston looked the worst on #5, so it was probably the first one to get bashed. So I picked up a new ACDelco HL118. At least stock parts are cheap.



https://i.imgur.com/Hwf94K5.mp4 movement

Posting that video on Facebook, I also stumbled into a mod I hadn't heard about. Shane said you can take the springs out of LS lifters and put them in the v6 lifters. Supposed to help with higher RPM. My bro in law happened to have a dead 6.0 in his yard so I grabbed all 16 figuring I could get 12 good ones anyway. I soaked them in solvent for an hour and then fought with them for a couple more hours to get them all apart. The lifters out of my 3400 came apart easily at least...good reminder to maintain your junk! The LS springs are definitely heavier, and the main spring is also longer, so in the v6 lifter body it will have even more pressure than it did in the longer v8 body. Hopefully there's an improvement, because it was a fair amount of work.

[EPfiffner]

That 6.0 was nasty, no wonder it was dead! I can see why the lifters were a challenge to get apart. The stiffer springs sound good in theory and it's hard to beat free.

[woody90gtz]

Yeah that 6.0 had a cracked block, so it was sitting outside a month or two with no heads. That doesn't help the lifters either. Should have seen them before the solvent! Needed pliers to get them out of their bores.

Took the car to work yesterday and today...running great. I'll put some more miles on it to get the fuel level down. That's easy weight reduction before racing. My dumb ass has screwed that up and raced on a full tank the last two times. I never used to worry about fuel because I could burn the majority of a tank on the way to the track...but not on a trailer! I've got a few tricks to try and drop the ET. Hopefully I can get there.

[woody90gtz]

Took it for a datalog and noticed the o2 sensor is acting up again. It's had thing for a few years where it will start reading "lean" and add fuel after a couple hours driving. But it would only do it when it had been on a couple hour drive. Other than that it was fine. Shutting it off for a few minutes and restarting would buy you some more "normal" time before it acted up again. I tested a few things that all had no change, so I band-aided it with a tight maximum BLM in the tune and set my highway fuel to 15.8:1 AFR so even when it acted up it was still stoich. It's one of those things I've been meaning to get to the bottom of...but never got around to it. Well, now it's acting up in a 5 minute drive...so I gotta sort it out.

I had already ruled out the o2 sensor itself when I first ran into it. So my best guess was a bad o2 sensor wire that maybe had some broken strands and would heat up over time and add resistance. So I de-pinned the o2 sensor and ran a wire directly to the ECM with a new pin that I robbed from my 92 truck ECM conversion. That means it 100% bypasses the existing harness. Tested it out today and no change. So.....maybe the ECM itself? They aren't the most reliable things...